A recent study found that in the United States, juries get the verdict wrong one out of every six times in criminal cases. It also concluded that professional judges don’t do much better. And frighteningly, both judges and juries are much more likely to send an innocent suspect to jail than allow a guilty person to go free. The study from Northwestern University calls into question not just the criminal justice system itself, but how Christians should view the idea of how biblical justice is applied.

The study is not the only recent news headline that has called many Americans to distrust the justice system. A clause in the United States Constitution gives the acting president unreviewable power to pardon any offense committed by a citizen. President Bush exercised a version of this executive power this week in a controversial decision to allow former White House aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby to commute a prison sentence instead of actually serving time behind bars. As part of the president’s order, Libby still must pay a $250,000 fine, but instead of going to prison for two and a half years (as determined by a jury), he would only serve a two-year probation. In a statement, the president said that the sentence that was issued by the jury was “excessive” for the crime Libby was convicted of—covering up the leaking of the name of a CIA operative.

President Bush is not the only commander-in-chief to exercise pardoning power and call into question the authority of America’s system of justice. During his term in office, Bill Clinton issued 396 pardons and 61 commutations; George H.W. Bush issued 74 pardons and 13 commutations; Ronald Reagan issued 393 pardons and 13 commutations; and the list goes on. (For the record, President George W. Bush has issued 13 pardons and 4 commutations.)

Though political analysts fall on both sides when examining the details of the Scooter Libby case, pointing to complexities and political motivations for both the original sentence and the pardon itself, the American public was also recently captivated by another—albeit less politically significant—criminal court proceeding. Just weeks prior to the Scooter Libby pardon, cable news programs allotted hours of coverage to the case of hotel fortune heiress and reality TV personality Paris Hilton as she went to jail, got out of jail and went back to jail in a whirlwind legal case surrounding a drunk-driving probation violation. The fascination with the case, as with many other Hollywood criminal proceedings, focused not just on the personality of the subject, but also how justice would be applied to a person of prominence.

As the dust continues to settle with the Scooter Libby case and Hollywood court proceedings remain the subject of news headlines, Christians are led to examine what their response should be to how justice is exercised. in an era of celebrity news, political inequality and social responsibility.